apostolakisl

I use a dynamic dns server. Assuming your router has nat loopback, you can use the external dns name both from within and from outside the LAN. I use no-ip as my dynamic dns provider. It is like $20 or something for a couple years for a whole bunch of DNS names. I have a name for my home and a name for my office and I donated a bunch of other names to friends and family. For example it could be (but isn't) home.no-ip.biz office.no-ip.biz I then use those in my ISY finder and it is quite obvious which is which. no-ip.com has a bunch of naming choices, it doesn't only have .no-ip.biz, there are like 50 choices. You can also pay extra to have it track a proprietary domain name that you own. For no-ip to track your IP address, should it ever change, you need something on your network that will update it. I have some foscam cameras at both home and work that have no-ip as a built-in service. Some brands of routers have no-ip as a built-in service. My Elk allows you to manually configure it to any service. If all else fails, you can run a background updater on a pc in your network. As it turns out, however, most of your ISP's never change your IP unless you replace your modem or they do some service on their network. If you don't have an automatic updater on your network, you'll have to manually set your IP using no-ip website anytime your IP address changes. What I have said here applies to pretty much all the dynamic dns providers. Enter https://yourdynamicdnsname into ISY finder and then it will show it just like that every time you run it in the future. be sure to have port forwarding on for the secure port.

In reality, it really doesn't matter what the temp is. You just need to look for a rise indicating start and fall indicating end. If it were me, I would use a cai board and a 1-wire waterproof probe. I would do it that way because it is pretty cheap, because I know how to write the code in about 10 minutes on a cai, and because I know it would do what I want. Alternatively, you could look for an open/close circuit temp sensor. They make these things, but exactly where you buy it I don't know. Basically, when the temp goes above some set point, it opens a contact. It is a mechanical thing, like an old fashion thermostat. That plus an iolinc would accomplish the same result.

Also, if you have unfinished basement under the shower, you can drill a hole in the drain line and put a temp probe, sealing it up with epoxy. Put it on the side of the pipe just before it falls into the trap and it will only be warm while water is actively flowing down the drain and washing over the probe. Once the shower ends, the probe will quickly cool off since it will be touching only air.

Looks about like the specs I saw. 2 brands I found, one was 3.75 and the other 5 inch radius. 3.75 you could probably make work given the extra 1/2 inch of sheet rock. Of course the 3.75/5 was the inside radius, so you lose the 1/2 inch or so to the other side of the pipe where it is pressed against the sheetrock on the other side of the wall.

1) Motion sensor in the shower for detecting showers lasting too long. 2) flow metering is just more detailed flow sensing and can be bought for about the same price, depending on the model. 3) flow sensors (on/off) style have lots of complaints on amazon about flow restriction, not seen that with flow meters 4) monitoring a flow meter doesn't cost any more than monitoring a flow sensor, just different parts (cai board vs i/o linc) 5) putting a flow meter or sensor on your water lines is going to involve two fittings, seems to be against your basic premise of getting rid of connections. 6) the title of this thread is ". . .shut off valve. . .", so it seemed like that was what we were talking about.

Just did some research. Pex 1/2 inch bend radius varies, but 3.75 to 5 inches is the range I found. Can't do that in a 2x4 wall, at least not to a nice perfect 90 degree poke out of the wall. I did see where people used a chrome sleeve over the pex sticking out of the floor to dress it up. Suppose you could do it for a wall fitting too if you had a 2x6 wall to make the bend. EDIT: Did see where some people had like 30 output manifolds. Totally doable, just a lot of pipe.

Fair enough, but mine was new. Certainly I know you and I can do this and not do any damage, but if a completely unrelated failure occurred and they found evidence of you tinkering in there, they'd say you voided your warranty. Plus, it is just so easy to plug in the synchrolinc and write a single short program and your done. No screwdriver needed and it takes 3 minutes.

I've seen this idea used elsewhere. It is probably a very good way to look for hot water usage, except it doesn't really tell you when it shut off very accurately since it take a while to cool off.

Seriously, is this what you are doing? Home running every single fixture? Running pex directly into the toilet or sink? How are making these observations a bother?

And voids the warranty.

You said you wanted to stop your kids from taking 30 minute showers. I guess you'll just go in there and turn it off by hand, or yell at them? Certainly I've done the latter. Maybe you can time their showers and make a spreadsheet and base their allowance off of it?

I suppose then you mean my plumber used the wrong fittings. But he did not. Failure rates are not zero for anything. I've got to see how you are going to set up your house without using a single elbow or t. I guess you are going to have a manifold at the main house valve with a home run line to every single individual water using device so as to avoid any T fittings? Even in a small house, that would probably be 50 pipes. Easily could be over 100 in a larger house with washing machines, dish washers, multiple kitchen sinks, 6 or 7 lines to each bathroom, multiple refrigerators, utility sinks, hose bibs, and so on and so on. You say it is a ranch, so I guess if you are going in your attic, and your attic is inside the house insulation envelope. You can turn the corner easily to go down the walls from the attic, yes. But there is no way you are going to turn out at the wall for your sink, toilet, and at similar locations. The standard is to crimp on to a copper pipe that mounts to the stud and pokes through the wall for your sink or toilet valve attachment. Pex won't do a 90 turn in 3.5 inches and even if it did, you still have to crimp onto a valve, and if you were to do that, you would have the flexible blue/red pipe poking through the wall looking a little goofy and not very stable since pex flexess. But no matter what, you still have to do a crimp of some sort at least once.

You just put a wait in the program. So if it turns back on again in less than the time allowed, the program that send the text message terminates. So, in fact, I don't get a text message the second the washer finishes, I (by I, I mean my wife) gets the text message 3 minutes later.

Not sure how it gets rid of T's since those are for turning 1 line into 2. It does reduce the number of elbows, but the turn radius on pex still requires the use of elbows in a lot of locations.. It is my opinion that the crimping on of fittings in pex is less secure than copper. I have never had a solderd fitting come apart, I did have a pex fitting come apart in a wall in my house. The metal band snapped, for reasons I can not explain. Fortunately I had a water sensor pick that up and it kept the damage to a bare minimum. I have had pin hole leaks in copper. I have never had that in pex. If burst pressure is an issue, God help you. Both copper and pex will never come close to bursting at 60psi, so something would be very very wrong if you are having to worry about that. Personally, I love pex, mostly because it is good stuff and is cheaper, but if cost were no concern, I would have put copper in my house.

Didn't know it did that.

I have to wonder why you would remove copper lines? Pex isn't better than copper, it is just cheaper, both for the materials and for the installation, so it pretty much has taken over new construction. But if your copper is already paid for and installed, I don't know why you would switch it out. Are you tearing out walls and and have to move the plumbing? I'm sure you are annoyed by your kids wasting hot water, but I'm also thinking that putting a shut off valve to each bathroom is going to cost way more than any savings on your hot water bill. The cheapest valves I have seen are the ones SH sells for $100/ea and you still need a flow monitor and an interface to get that signal to ISY. . . .probably another $100. So $200 per shower times however many showers. I only spend $500 on propane for my entire family of 5 every 2 or 3 years (usually buy about 300 gallons at about $1.75/gal). Any valve for residential use will be rated for hot water use. The flow switch . .. who knows, each one will have its own deal.

If you use a tankless water heater you can put a synchrolinc on the water heater power supply. All the tankless models I have seen have a fan running while the burner is on which a syncrholinc would be able to monitor.

Sounds to me like your starting from scratch, mostly. You can export your entire set of programs and import them back. But as far as scenes, you can't do that. When you import the programs, I think it will drop the same devices back into each program, but I'm not 100% on that. I've never exported and then imported back into my own system. When I import someone else's programs, I have to go through and specify all the devices, but of course you would expect that. If you take some screen shots of your scenes and folder architecture, it probably won't take that long to rebuild, especially if you have the pro-isy model where you can delay the write. And if your going to the trouble, you should factory reset all your devices and truly have a clean start. THEN MAKE A BACKUP AND SAVE IT IN 2 PLACES!!!! put it on google drive or something.

This is for the drier. The washer is easy, I just plugged it into a synchrolinc and tweaked the settings until it gave the proper on/off status.

That flapper is from Lowe's and if memory serves me, listed for both gas and electric. But gas is going to be 120v and you can just use a synchrolinc.

There is this. http://www.bonanza.com/listings/G3-4-Male-Threaded-1-30L-min-Magnetic-Type-Water-Flow-Switch-Flowmeter-DC-250V/255554134?goog_pla=1&gpid=18283950120&keyword=&goog_pla=1&pos=1o2&ad_type=pla&gclid=CjwKEAjwydK_BRDK34GenvLB61YSJACZ8da3fG9YS46Nr4D0Yg0LNFoqufg7byqa1idm9mMnPMe5ExoCQuPw_wcB Brass made in China, probably not code in US. I saw similar ones on amazon and there were complaints about it not be NPT and about water flow restriction. You would need an IO linc to make this thing communicate. If it were me, I would go with a pulse counter and a CAI board. That combo would be cheaper and you would get the added info of flow rate, even if it didn't really matter. It would be a very simple program to write on CAI to post to a variable the current flow rate. Every 5 seconds or so it could post a REST value to a variable showing the flow rate, in the event that the flow rate changed. You wouldn't have it keep posting "0" every 5 seconds, only if it changed. That is what I speaking of a ways back. If I were going to get this, I would install it on the main house feed and get the benefit of a whole house water protection.

On = pulses happening off = no pulses You still need to count pulses or at least measure the length of time since the most recent pulse to know flow vs no flow

Just thought I would update on this. I have had this working for about 6 months now and it is proving to be a success.

This will help with pulse counting using CAI. http://cocoontech.com/forums/topic/22252-how-to-count-pulse-from-water-flow-or-energy-meter/

To the best of my knowledge, no insteon device is capable of pulse counting. You would also need to use something like a raspberry pi or cai webcontrol board with code written on it that monitors the pulse count, makes sense of it, then posts to ISY something that you can base an ISY program on.